WDVX maintains its mission as Knoxville’s most vibrant voice, even during COVID-19
It didn’t crash and burn like scenes lifted from Stephen King’s pandemic-centric novel “The Stand,” but life in downtown Knoxville slowly sputtered to a stop sometime in mid-March.
Businesses closed their doors. Downtown residents retreated to the safety of lofts and apartments. Gay Street, normally bumper-to-bumper at all hours of the day and most of the night, was reduced to a trickle of traffic, the lack of noise reverberating off of concrete and steel and glass as eerie as the absence of rumbling transit buses and the belching fogs of exhaust.
Throughout Knoxville – along with the cities, counties and states that surround it – life got surreal very quickly. But if there was one thing East Tennesseans could count on to keep them grounded in reality, it was WDVX-FM.
Tune in to 89.9 or 102.9 FM, and there it was: all of the programs and personalities, in their usual time slots and spinning their usual soupcon of tunes, offering humor, pathos, observances and encouragement. Despite the topsy-turvy times that had come to East Tennessee because of COVID-19, the radio station remained a beacon of solace and routine, continuing a mission that, from the outset, has made it the beating heart of this community.
“It’s been challenging, but you know something else? It’s really caused us to focus even harder to realize that, at times, maybe we can take what we do for granted,” says WDVX co-founder Tony Lawson, the station’s general manager. “We don’t recognize just how special it is, I think, because of the daily flow, but when something happens and interrupts that, you get a chance to see how the station affects people. I’m happy to say that Red [Hickey, host of the regular live music show “The Blue Plate Special”] has been reaching out on a regular basis to some of our ‘Blue Plate’ attendees who are elderly and calling them on a weekly basis. I know in our development department, they’ve been reaching out and calling some of our supporters all across the country.
“And because of that, those supporters are reaching out to us. In the past two days, we’ve received donations from Wyoming, from Florida, from Michigan and New York City and New Jersey and California – all over the country! And it just speaks loudly, I think, for the station and the longevity and the bond we have built with listeners. We’re working hard to improve what we do musically and program-wise, and from the beginning, we started asking how we can adapt to the times and improve something in the social-distancing area that allows us to keep promoting live music like we’ve always done.”
Of course, “live music” doesn’t mean the same thing it once did. In fact, a lot of radio terms don’t carry the same meaning as they did before the coronavirus arrived in East Tennessee. That shift is just one of many challenges Lawson and the entire WDVX team have faced: adjusting to the “new normal,” whatever that may be, because nothing is the same as it once was. The hope, of course, is that they’ll get back to that place, but when is anyone’s guess. Hickey feels that uncertainty as much as anyone else.
“I’m continuing to book [the “Blue Plate Special” live] shows as if they’re going on, but I’m also canceling them by month,” she said. “The first week of May, I canceled June, and we’re just deciding a month out right now. Basically, we’re shut down until the end of June, and we’re debating on July. I’m continuing to book July, August and beyond, but if I have to go back and cancel, I will.”
However, just because the Knoxville Visitor Center – the place WDVX has called home since 2004 – has been shut down until recently, doesn’t mean there haven’t been “live” performances put out into the digital space by WDVX. One of the benefits of shutting down the station’s live component is that it’s given staff members time to take stock of the embarrassment of riches they have in terms of video footage.
“A couple of years ago, when the visitor center was renovated, we took a two-month break, but since then, we haven’t taken any sort of hiatus,” said Katie Cauthen, WDVX program director. “We had been experimenting a lot with filming the shows, but we’re always so focused on the next day or the next week that it was almost impossible to process that content when we were, at the same time, constantly producing new shows the next day.
“So we did a 30-day challenge of posting live videos. We started April 1, and we put out a new music video each day – most from ‘The Blue Plate,’ but we also did one from ‘Tennessee Shines’ and one from last summer’s Market Square ‘Blue Plate.’ In May, we pulled back a little and just did two videos a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, mostly because we also decided to launch our new website.”
And that, according to Lawson, has been the other behind-the-scenes Herculean feat of strategy and planning: how to roll out a new digital product while keeping a radio station on the air around the clock, when offices are closed and stay-at-home orders are mandated for the health and safety of employees. It was, he added, slightly anxiety-inducing. But then something happened that shook up the WDVX family, and by extension, listeners: Americana titan John Prine died because of COVID-19 complications on April 7, and as tragic as his passing was, it also provided a way forward for the WDVX team.
“That was a really huge, common thread with many WDVX listeners, so we wanted to just capture the feeling of the time and try to do our best to program to that while we build an all-new radio station digitally, and while we’re operating remotely,” Lawson said. “We’re building our structure while we’re continuing to operate, and adjusting our new website launch, which we hope to debut in mid-June and which will all be event-driven.
“It causes us to pause, but it gives us new direction to what we’re going to do with that website. It’s an ‘all-in-this-together’ kind of thing that we’re going to be coordinating with musicians, with venues, with tourism, with the livelihood of our culture and what we like to do. We’re looking at ways we can utilize our new website and learning more about technology and how we can deliver some things through that and through working with artists. For example, I would love to be able to do a live regular show that benefits musicians during this time, and that’s what I’m working on right now. I think we’re really close to it, and hopefully that’ll be part of the launch of our new website in mid-June.”
The new website, Lawson added, is about “more” – more video, more information, more personality, more interaction – of the station that first started broadcasting regularly from a 14-foot camping trailer in November 1997. Back then, the operation was truly grassroots and DIY – and in many ways, the retreat from the Knoxville Visitor Center to their respective homes has been like turning back the clock, Hickey added.
“My husband told me that when [the work-from-home] first started happening, that he could hear a difference in my voice because I’m more relaxed,” Hickey said. “Normally, I do the ‘Blue Plate,’ go to lunch, and I only get 45 minutes, so if my server is slow or anything at all happens, then I’m always rushing. Now, I love just being in my own little world right here. Plus, I fixed up my attic, and it looks very similar to the inside of the camper! Every time we’re on a video chat with Grace [Toensing, host of “Americana Mix” and the WDVX webmistress], she’s like, ‘You look like you’re in the camper,’ and I feel like I’m in the camper!
“In the camper days, when we were broadcasting back then, you were the only person there. There wasn’t a whole staff of people, and the way we’re doing this right now takes me right straight back to the days of being in the camper. I have to program my show around when my husband or my neighbor is mowing the grass outside, of whether there’s a rainstorm hitting the roof really hard. Honestly, I really love it. Back then, you didn’t see anybody, and you could go to work with your pajamas on.
“I miss getting dressed [up], of course, and I like being social and seeing people – and I especially miss hugging people because I’m a hugger,” she added. “I miss the social aspect of it all, but the broadcast part of it is very similar to the good old days.”
Except the evolution of WDVX as a public entity has meant that there’s a greater responsibility on the part of the WDVX team to shepherd East Tennessee through the storm of COVID-19. There’s always been something of a greater mission than just spinning tunes, Lawson said, adding that if that’s all his vision for the station had been, he wouldn’t have worked from 1991 to 1997 to get it off the ground and done so without a single dime to show for it. He and his partner, broadcast engineer Don Burggraf, “did this for sheer love, and we knew what it had an opportunity to do,” Lawson said.
“At the time, we felt local radio was being wasted, and that the medium that could have an impact in our community was being programmed from places beyond East Tennessee, and had no reflection on our character or our culture,” he said. “This is something I sort of fantasized and dreamed about as a young teenager in the holler in Campbell County – and now it’s here.”
But it needs help. The coronavirus pandemic reached maximum effect in East Tennessee just three days into the station’s spring fund drive, and WDVX personnel were forced to scramble in order to comply with stay-at-home orders while keeping the station on the air. Because programming relies on special guests to help curry monetary favor from listening donors, the regular fund drive was scrapped.
“Not only did we not want our volunteers to come in and put themselves at risk, it just didn’t feel like the time to be asking for money,” Cauthen said. “We need it, of course, but it wasn’t the right time. Instead, we focused on what we do best: play music for people when they had to be at home and maybe wanted to escape the news for a minute.”
June 24-26, the station will hold an abbreviated fund drive to generate some desperately needed dollars. Until then, everyone else who gives of their time to keep “East Tennessee’s Own” on the air will continue to do what they do best.
Lawson will, as always, continue to captain the ship, ensuring that it steers toward the vibrant and rich waters that reflect the region’s diversity.
“It’s just an interesting hodgepodge, or what I call a roux, of what we consider our brand, our formula of Americana,” he said. “It’s a big umbrella of people whose reach extends beyond East Tennessee to around the world, and they all have a fan base and bring certain folks to the table. It comes from a good, soulful place that’s really real, and I think that’s what our listeners pick up on.”
Cauthen will continue to serve as his first officer, in a sense, organizing new videos every Tuesday and Thursday in June and serving as one of the many calming voices amid the growing dissonance of social and medical unrest.
“I have my home studio set up and my little microphone set up, and when I had to adapt and start doing it from home, I just got really real with our listeners,” she said. “Sometimes, I go in the backyard, so they can hear the birds, and we tell them that we’re staying at home and hope they are too, if they can, and that they’re staying safe and healthy. We keep up the good vibes that way, and it’s almost like setting an example.”
Without a live “Blue Plate” to host, Hickey spends her days hosting her own show and keeping the “Blue Plate” spirit alive by calling the regulars who were often in the audience of the live show on a daily basis.
“They’re really dedicated, and they’re really important to the ‘Blue Plate,’ so I try to call one person each day,” she said. “I’ve got a list of quite a few regulars who come to the ‘Blue Plate’ who are kind of like family, and they help make the show special. But that goes for all of our listeners, who started emailing us when all this began, telling us they were listening at home during the day and were relying on us.
“It’s a public duty to tell people to cover their mouths and wash their hands, of course, but it’s a duty, also, to give them something else other than the news to occupy their minds, and to give them a familiar voice that they’re used to and brings them comfort.”
